BY day, it’s just another big truck on a journey, snaking along narrow roads in the Highlands and Islands, 33 tons of blue and white articulated lorry.

By night, it puts down its legs, opens its sides and invites the people of rural Scotland to climb in for a trip to another world. Like Hollywood’s shapeshifting Transformers, the Screen Machine is a versatile marvel.

For 15 years, this blockbuster juggernaut has been trundling from Arran to Applecross, hauling its cargo of blockbuster flicks and arthouse features on a silver screen roadshow to the parts of the land that other cinemas cannot reach.

Now it’s on its anniversary tour, touring rural Scotland with the country’s surprise documentary hit We Are Northern Lights.

As one of two Screen Machine drivers, Neil MacDonald has been in the cabin of the blue movie wagon for eight years.

But he’s more than just the man behind the wheel. “We do the driving, everything connected to setting up the cinema,” he said.

“It’s quite physical work, which is good, because we sit for long periods of the day, so this keeps us active. I’m the first-aider, administrator and the projectionist too.

“Myself and the other driver Iain MacColl are both dyed-in-the-wool projectionists and we didn’t want to lose our old 35mm reel-to-reel.

“But funding was there and if we hadn’t taken it, we would have lost it.

“A couple of years ago, we lost the old projector and converted to digital.

“Now it’s all special codes and automatic lenses. The computer does everything. You don’t have as much control over that but it does an excellent job so we reluctantly moved with the times.

“We still have mechanical breakdowns sometimes and we have to work through the night to fix things, because if the Screen Machine doesn’t arrive when people have been expecting it, then it’s a huge let-down.”

Ninety people can enjoy this mobile cinema

The purpose-built structure – a 430bhp, turbo-charged, inter-cooled, Volvo FH12 truck – folds out and packs away with an efficiency Ikea designers can only dream of.

This is Screen Machine Mk II. The first one has been retired to Cornwall (and includes a trip to entertain the British forces in Bosnia in its service history). Mk I had a four-hour set-up time, Mk II is a quarter of that.

Neil is chatting in a car park at the Torridon Inn in Wester Ross, after a precision drive on single-track roads from nearby Lochcarron, the venue for the previous night’s screening.

He had to take the long way round, rather than going up and over the infamously hair-raising Bealach na Ba, the highest pass in Britain.

Jeremy Clarkson might count it as one of the best drives in the world, but trying hauling a 90-seat cinema up the side of a mountain.

“Sometimes I can’t actually see the road in my mirrors,” said Neil.

“It will be taking up the whole strip of tar on some of the single track roads.”

The night before, the lorry was located next to the Lochcarron shinty field.

A game was being played in the late night sunshine on the warmest day of the year, proving stiff competition for the evening’s double bill of Pierce Brosnan’s Love Is All You Need and We Are Northern Lights.

Neil grew up in the fishing community of Loch Ewe and helped run film clubs in town halls around Wester Ross in the 1960s. At that time, locals only had access to two BBC channels – those with a TV at least.

When the film clubs folded, people went without. Visiting the nearest cinema in Inverness was a 120-mile round trip.

Without the Screen Machine, it would be the same now.

Neil said: “I know people see films before they’ve come out, I hear people talking about illegal downloads and things. But everyone who comes to the Screen Machine says it’s the cinema environment that makes the experience.

“There’s a real social thing, a gathering for folk in rural communities.

“Sometimes I’m reluctant to start the film running because the conversations are so animated.”

There’s no popcorn for sale and the toilets are usually the nearest public loo, like the changing rooms at the Lochcarron shinty club. Occasionally, Neil said, they’re al fresco.

But despite the lack of frills, or maybe because of them, the Screen Machine is loved by the communities it serves. Neil said: “People toot their horns and flash their lights when they see us driving in. I love doing a job where folk are glad to see you. We have 35 different communities and each one sees the Screen Machine as their own.

“As soon as people see you, they ask when you’re coming back.

“People don’t want to lose it, and everyone hopes the funding doesn’t stop (it relies on subsidies from a variety of sources including local government and Creative Scotland).

“We have the same funding as last year but with the fuel prices going up that’s effectively a cut, so things like that are a worry.

“If this was to go, it would be a huge loss to people. Some, like those up in Kinlochbervie, would be hundreds of miles from a cinema. That’s why people love Screen Machine so much. I’m just the operator and the man at the wheel when it comes to town. But the Screen Machine itself is the celebrity.”

The Screen Machine’s 15th Anniversary Tour, including screenings of We Are Northern Lights, runs throughout June and July, www.screenmachine.co.uk